Notes and Questions

What is Computer Science?

Why is Computer Science not a real science?

Why is Computer Science not really engineering?

Moore's Law: Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, observed in 1965
that transistor density approximately doubles every 18 months. In
rough terms, this means that the amount of computing power you can get
for a fixed price doubles every 18 months. (Its not a "law", its an
observation, but so far it seems to hold remarkably well.)

If it takes 60 seconds to compute a photomosaic for Problem Set
1 today on a typical PC, estimate how long it will take CS200
students in 2008 to compute the same photomosaic? How long will it take
in 2011?

I make bold to say that I never have despised anything belonging to
erudition, but have learned much which to others seemed to be trifling
and foolish. Some things are worth knowing on their own account; but
others, although apparently offering no return for our trouble, should
not be neglected, because without them the former cannot be thoroughly
mastered.

Didascalicum, Hugo of St. Victor, around 1120

What is your major and which of the traditional seven liberal arts
(grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy)
are covered by your major (if you have one)?

Are there any non-recursive natural languages? What would happen to a
society that spoke one?

The MIT Instrumentation Lab had been designing software for the
Apollo onboard guidance system even before the word software
was invented. I still remember the first time I told my wife that I was in charge of
"Apollo Software". She exhorted me: "Please don't tell any of our friends!"

I do not know when I have been so tantalized by anything, and should be
ashamed to say how much time I have spent upont it, in vain. These
Functional Equations are complete Will-o-the-Wisps to me. The moment I
fancy I have really at last got hold of something tangible and
substantial, it all receded further and further and vanishes again into
thin air...